Social and spatial patterns of two Afromontane crag lizards (<i>Pseudocordylus</i> spp.) in the Maloti‐Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Understanding the evolution of vertebrate sociality requires comparative data on social associations across the vertebrate phylogeny. In the case of group‐living lizards (i.e. species that live in stable social aggregations often associated with a shared resource), most work has focused on the Egerniinae in Australia, resulting in a taxonomic and geographic skew to our understanding of reptile sociality. The African cordylid lizards (Cordylidae) are also a promising system to study the evolution of sociality because grouping behaviour varies across the clade. Here, we studied the conspecific grouping behaviour of two crag lizards, Pseudocordylus langi and P. melanotus subviridis that occur at high elevations in the Maloti‐Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa. To better understand their social organisation and mating system, we also present data on their spatial distribution, sexual dimorphism, and bite force. Both Pseudocordylus spp. were sexually dimorphic in morphology (males had larger heads than females of similar body size), colouration (males were more colourful) and female P. langi had a weaker bite force than males. Both P. langi and P. m. subviridis were associated with rocky habitat on the mountainside (e.g. cliffs, rock buttresses, and rock outcrops) and both were spaced apart and rarely in groups (79% of P. langi and 90% of P. m. subviridis were observed alone). Based on our findings, we hypothesise that both Pseudocordylus spp. have a territorial social structure and a polygynous mating system. This novel natural history information about crag lizards supports the assertion that Cordylidae is another model system for examining the evolution of sociality.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".